Roy thackerson biography

OLDEN – The rain finally started falling after Roy Thackerson and I stepped outside.

Muffled by the closed door behind us, the music from the next act at the Olden Community Center softly played as Thackerson and I began talking.

“They have this musical the third Friday night of every month,” he said.

“Except sometimes in December they’ll postpone it, you know, for Christmas. We usually make four or five of them a year.”

You might know Thackerson, who now is 80, as the Fingerless Fiddler. When he was 6, an old dynamite cap he’d found exploded in his left hand, destroying most of those fingers.

But even with only four nubs left, Thackerson learned how to play guitar by laying it flat and pressing down on the strings.

Years after that, he applied the same strategy to playing the fiddle, using a custom-made wooden harness to support the instrument as he presses down on the neck.

While Thackerson has played at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville,